


v. Hermione Granger

by Razo



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Hogwarts House Sorting, Alternate Universe, F/M, Modern Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-15 13:23:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16934034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razo/pseuds/Razo
Summary: The problem is Harry. Tom loves Harry, unfortunately. Tom would not recognize the word "love" if you tattooed it on the inside of his eyelids, but he does. He can't really help it. He has, against his will, faked it until he made it.For the prompt "Tom is adopted by the Potters."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weestarmeggie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weestarmeggie/gifts).



Oh, the Potter boys. Nature versus nurture, and how. Nature brawls nurture over the course of years, kicking and clawing in the nursery, through the halls of the house in Godric's Hollow, on the back of tiny broomsticks, on nightmare nights when no one tells Tom to shut up, or calls him a coward. Nature laughs when Harry falls and bloodies his nose; nature takes a fist to the gut when Harry solemnly breaks his biscuit in two and gives half to Tom. Nature gains ground in the Muggle primary school Lily insists on, feeding on the cruelties of children; nature loses it when Harry--

(Harry, here, now, has a boy in the house who hits, bites, who wants everything, but, crucially, this boy is not bigger and stronger and supported by adults.)

\--leaps to his defense, skinny limbs flailing to startling effect. Thanks, Uncle Sirius.

Tom broods over Harry's skinned knuckles long after their father ("he's not my father" is one of the first arguments Tom loses in his life, actually properly loses, rather than being forced to concede by virtue of age and size) heals the damage. Violence is easy for him to understand. Violence and pain are Tom Potter's equivalent of perfect pitch. He did not have to work to understand them, and it baffles him when people do. It baffles him when Harry demands to know why that boy pushed him--

"Because he could," Tom said. "Because he's bigger than me."

"You can't push people just because you're big!"

Tom isn't old enough or eloquent enough to put words to the knowledge in his gut, that says _yes you can, yes people do, Harry, can't you read, haven't you ever peeked at mum's telly, don't you know about the world outside the yellow house?_ Tom just shrugs.

That night their parents are proud of Harry, and trying not to show it. Tom keeps his mouth full and thinks about this. Hitting is apparently okay if it's not for yourself. Tom likes hitting.

(Nature and nurture exchange glances, are unsure if either of them really won that one.)

Here is another thing Tom learns, in the yellow house full of laughter and magic and uncles and aunts: a lookout is really useful. Also, one pair of child's hands aren't strong enough to deal with the childproofing on the cabinets, but two are. He also isn't quite tall enough to reach the lowest branch on the tree by himself, and if he doesn't help pull Harry up after him, Harry won't help boost him up next time.

He never learns how to be hungry. He thinks he learns how to be alone, but alone in your neighborhood with Auntie Marlene coming out of her house every twenty minutes to bellow about staying hydrated is a pretty weak kind of alone.

So here is the state of play, when the Hogwarts owls come: Tom Potter is loved. Tom Potter is fed and warm. Tom Potter has learned the benefits of cooperating with certain, carefully chosen others. Tom Potter has not known deprivation.

Tom Potter is very smart. Tom Potter is a keen observer of human weakness, who remembers slights years longer than gifts. Tom Potter knows that he has very little power or control, and he hates it.

So, little owl. Let the fight for the future of Britain begin.

 

*

 

Nimue's tits, the Sorting. Such drama. Such importance. Such a massive branch in someone's life, and decided how? Less than five minutes perusing the thoughts of eleven year olds. All respect to eleven year olds, but a fleeting daydream of being the best pokemon trainer in the world should not be enough to rule the next seven years of one's life.

Tom is fascinated by Slytherin, where no one in his family wants him to go. In this he is a typical child. (The Forbidden Forest might as well be called the Mega Fun Candy and Popsicles Zone. The Wizarding World has not made many strides in the field of child psychology.) Living in a dungeon sounds incredible. House of curses and dark magic? Sign him up twice.

The problem is Harry. Tom loves Harry, unfortunately. Tom would not recognize the word "love" if you tattooed it on the inside of his eyelids, but he does. He can't really help it. He has, against his will, faked it until he made it. Harry wants to be in Gryffindor, like their parents. Tom has made very little headway, and every time Uncle Severus comes over, he destroys what little progress Tom has made.

What to do? He could let them be separated. Their parents seem to expect this, and drop hints about how it's okay, and they'll be fine if it happens, and still see each other plenty, and grow to their own strengths, blah blah blah. This is not, for reasons he won't examine, acceptable. Did he let Madeline McKinnon have his fairy cake when he was seven? Like hell he did. Did he let the Davenport twins touch his broomstick? Of course not. This wasn't different.

_I'll set you on fire if it's not Gryffindor,_ he thinks, loudly as he can. With a gentle pling! the crest on his robes turns red.

He watches the line go down, marking every new Slytherin with envy. He's going to have to make one of them, at least one of them, his friend.

(Tom Potter thinks "friend", instead of "ally", even if what he means by "friend" is a little... let's call it "freely interpreted".)

 

*

 

Tom Potter is brilliant and magically gifted and he is

not

first

in all his classes. He is brilliant, scary brilliant, and scary powerful for his age, and _not first in all his classes_. And it's not a mistake and it's not a misunderstanding and it's not a fluke.

Harry, if he didn't have to live with the guy, might have admitted how funny it was, watching Tom try to deal with this. Like a cat trying to bite a watermelon. Like a snake trying to digest a mouse that turned out to be a rock.

 

*

 

There's no troll here. What there is is a brawl, and detention, and the magical world's characteristic lack of concern for health and safety. So, step one:

Tom is working on Making a Slytherin Friend when they hear Hermione Granger getting told off for being a brown noser, know it all, swot, etc etc. The hallways right here aren't situated for her to easily get past her tormentors. It's not like they disagree entirely, but Hermione does look like she's going to cry, which makes Tom's friend puff up and turn red and if he curses anyone with that terrible, spellotaped wand, they are all in trouble.

Step two: it's fine to hurt people if it's not for yourself. Tom taps Zacharias Smith's shoulder, and when he turns around, Tom punches him the solar plexus. Ron stares at him in surprised joy.

(Listen, who knows what happened on the train, with Harry and Tom sitting with Neville Longbottom and Cynthia Pratchett? Who did Ron end up squished in with, in this train crowded with children who weren't born that other world? Who knows why he climbed up in that chair, thinking angrily, forlornly, I want to be different, I want to be more, I don't want to be just another Weasley--)

Step three: Harry sighs and pushes his way through the gathering crowd. He gets there in time to throw exactly one punch.

Step four: Hermione claims she started the fight, and they were just protecting her.

Step five: "Be that as it may, Miss Granger--"

Step six: Tom, Harry, Ron, Hermione are in one group that heads into the Forbidden Forest to harvest Shrugging Frogspawn; Zacharias, Finn Rowle II, Sarah Pierce, and Fang are in the other. Group 2 has an unpleasantly sticky night and passes out of out story. Group 1 stumbles into a thicket of Cannibal Ivy. Cannibal Ivy's name is not a metaphor.

Step seven: Tom and Hermione fight back to back for the first time in their lives. Not the last. When Tom turns and focuses only on the enemy in front, because there is no possibility Hermione will fail him, she is at his back so he is free--

There are wheels turning, above and beyond them, there are great gears whose teeth slip loose and fail to catch each other again, there is a sea change, there is a book closed, and never opened again.

Step eight: "What was that spell you used, at the end?" Hermione asks, shyly. "I'll show you," Tom promises.

Ron never entirely forgives Tom for laughing at his fear of Acromantulas. Tom's Slytherin Friend is mostly Harry's Slytherin Friend after that, but Tom hardly cares.

 

*

 

He does still try to beat Hermione at everything. Hermione does the same to him. It doesn't choke him, anymore, though. Tom, on some level, considers her success to be his success. He doesn't really know love in a way that is not devouring.

 

*

Lily, standing in the kitchen, holding a letter, snorts a laugh. "Harry says Tom has made friends with his mortal enemy."

"I worry sometimes about the number of mortal enemies our son has made."

"That's just his way," Lily, best friend to Severus Snape, says fondly.

"Friends, though," James says. "That's good to hear. We should see if the boys want to invite anyone over this summer."


	2. Chapter 2

 

In the summer before Fourth Year, Hermione and Tom have a fight.

It's about a lot of things. It's about what Tom looks at in the Restricted Section, and whether Hermione is burning herself out, and House Elves, and their future ambitions, and how to get there; it's about the terrifying idea their ambitions might not lead them the same place, and it's about Tom watching Hermione setting her teeth in her full lower lip and Hermione watching Tom's hands lazily spinning a quill.

To everyone who isn't them, Hermione-and-Tom seems as inevitable as the tide. On the inside, it's a little more complicated. Primarily because Hermione has morals, and Tom has... people and things that he values, and the objective knowledge that violence is only one possible answer. Things that aren't on his list are only halfway real to him.

There's also the fact they are thirteen and their hormones are a cement block resting on a gas pedal.

Hermione and Tom are coldly polite, all through the rest of Hermione's by-now-traditional visit to Godric's Hollow. Harry and Ron do a lot of eye-rolling behind their backs, and tolerant half-listening to how she/he is so INFURIATING and he/she can't believe all the TIME HE/SHE WASTED ON HIM/HER.

 

*

 

Tom pitches a massive sulk about not being able to compete in the Triwizard Tournament. Harry lasts ten minutes and then draws the curtains around his bed and refuses to hear any more about it.

 

*

 

"I dunno, he spends more time in your common room than ours now," Harry glooms. "You probably know better than I do."

"We don't talk that much, these days," Ron says.

Harry and Ron are down by the lake, companionably working their way through a giant pile of snacks. Periodically one of them tosses a scrap to the Giant Squid. No one theorizes about the Giant Squid's diet, or how it got in a frigid Scottish lake, or if it's ever eaten anyone, or if it could be persuaded to.

Ron had wished for this, occasionally. For time with Harry, without barbed jokes or references that flew over his head, for the ability to just relax. Now he's got it, and he does enjoy it, but... Harry's not as happy as he could be. And some of Tom's comments were pretty funny, dammit. And sometimes he does want to know how the Squid could have gotten into the lake. Harry's his best friend, his favorite person, pretty much, but he is learning, as some people don't ever, that you can't be everything to everyone.

A tentacle snaps an apple core out of the air.

"Do you think it eats all these things? Or like, collects them, maybe?"

"Maybe," Harry says. "Maybe it's just really passionate about recycling."

There's a lull, where no one suggests any sinister motive.

"If we locked them in a cupboard, do you think they'd kill each other, or snog?"

Harry wrinkles his nose. "I don't want to think about my brother snogging."

"But murder's fine, then."

"Well, it's Tom," Harry says. "You have to be realistic."

In this world, that statement is almost entirely a joke.

 

*

 

Here is not how they make up:

Hermione at the top of the stairs, ready for the Yule Ball, hair straightened, heels high, green dress chosen with Tom's eyes in mind. At last, Hermione Granger performs traditional femininity, Tom is struck down with astonished horn, pretty dresses save the day. Bzzzt, no.

Here is not how they make up:

Tom sees Hermione's hands on another boy and completely blows his top. He vows no one else will ever touch her. Hermione swoons for eternity. Wrong again.

Here is how the meeting at the top of the stairs actually goes:

Tom is on Fleur's arm, and as beautiful as he is, he is only human. Fleur is poreless and satin-haired and has eyes like a baby deer. Tom is a human boy who doesn't know cosmetic charms. Next to a veela is the ugliest he has ever looked. Hermione feels this horrible, shattering warmth inside her, like someone broke an egg in her chest.

For Tom, seeing her always feels like a blow, and none of these bells and whistles make it significantly worse.

("If you go with me, you won't need to worry about drool," Tom had told Fleur, after watching her turn away a stuttering Ravenclaw.

She glanced at him. "This, I have heard before."

"Try me," he said.)

Viktor turns his head to exchange a few words with Cedric. Hermione fixes her eyes on the crowd, where she sees Harry and Ron gawping with a total lack of dignity, though at which one is anyone's guess. She can't keep sneaking looks at Tom. Seeing him Veela-sloppy and fawning would be too much for her to bear.

 

*

 

Many years in the future, Tom and Fleur are friends. (See previous note about defining the term "friend".) One tells the other, I think we could have been good together. I think, we are smart and ambitious creatures, maybe with an emphasis on the word creature, hmm? Fleur's mother discusses quite frankly how she occasionally wants to eat her husband. Fleur started out with an idea of love that was a little off.

They talk about it, idly, people decorating a house they won't ever live in-- _you wouldn't tell me no enough._

_That's true. I would tell you yes, my love, of course, my love, and do exactly what I had already planned to do. And you would not do well in France._

_Why's that?_

_That accent, Tom. And my Grandmother, she would smell the curses on you, she would gobble you up like a cherry._

_Our children would be beautiful, though._

_Oh, beyond doubt, if I believed you could raise to adulthood even a fish._

Tom laughs into his glass. _Probably best we didn't, then._

Fleur smiles. _Yes, probably._

Hermione sees Viktor, occasionally, and exchanges letters with him on and off, as he transitions from Quidditch player to philanthropist, and she never says, do you think we could have worked? You're a handsome man, and a smart one, and moral, do you think we could have been married, and I could have loved you like a person loves a person, instead of this love I have that is like fire loving dry leaves?

 

*

 

They dance with other people. They don't speak. Harry calls Tom an idiot, and laughs louder than necessary when Padma Patil asks, all faux innocence, if mummy and daddy are still fighting?

"Don't call me Daddy in public, Padma," Tom says, and is pleased by how uncomfortable she looks.

 

*

 "Have you seen Hermy-own?"  
  
Tom does not turn around from the punch bowl. He is being a perfect date. Fleur is waiting with some of her friends. "Why would I have seen her?"  
  
"Because you watch her like a cat watch a mouse hole," Viktor says, pleasantly enough. Viktor Krum, professional athlete, triwizard champion, who Tom desperately wants to sideline as some buffoon, and who is nothing of the kind. Tom finishes pouring his cups and faces him.  
  
Viktor is not looking at Tom like Tom is a threat. Tom wants to wind his intestines out on a stick. He just needs to get the first strike, it doesn't matter if someone is bigger than you if you were faster and nastier--  
  
"Did you lose her?"  
  
"She says she will be right back, and she runs off." Viktor gestures with a hand. "She is not right back. I check with Harry first. Now I check with you."  
  
He needs to take this punch back to Fleur. There's a time limit here, to being the perfect date. Sensibly, he needs to take these back to Fleur, make an excuse, then come back to Viktor. The likelihood Grindlewald would try anything with so much so much security on the grounds is tiny. There are foreign diplomats here, for God's sake, it's not just the Auror Corps.  
  
Tom puts down the cups. "What did Harry say?"  
  
"He check the dormitory."  
  
"You keep looking in here. If you don't hear anything in fifteen minutes, tell Dumbledore."  
  
"Where are you going?"  
  
But Tom's already heading out to the grounds.  
  
He needs a better way to keep track of--people, he's thinking irritably, ten minutes later. Something of theirs, bound into a piece of jewelry, that he could carry with him? No, it's too easy to get separated from a ring or a necklace. Besides, that could get bulky quickly. He's not a damn Christmas tree.  
  
Tom hexes Crabbe and Goyle out of an arch of roses, and some giggling Durmstrang students away from a newly-magicked-up pixie bower. Besides, how long does hair or blood retain its usefulness, once off the body? Possibly something that they could carry with them, then. No. Hermione and Harry had a lot of feelings. They might throw them into a drawer in a fit of pique, and then where would he be? Stomping around the Hogwarts grounds like an imbecile, tripping over couples he doesn't give a good goddamn about. Something more permanent. Something like a ta--  
  
"Got you," Hermione says, out of the dark. Tom goes still. His wand is out. His knees bend slightly. Her voice is slightly breathless, her tone satisfied. There's a bit of rustling afterwards that he can't put a name to.  
  
He creeps forward, laying his feet down like soft-falling snow.  
  
For the ball, gardens and winding paths had sprung up in front of the castle--magicked enough to make your ears ring, of course, for Scotland in December is no tropical isle. Hermione has found a little niche that makes Tom really wonder what the chaperones were thinking. There's an arch of white flowers and lazily curling ivy, and tucked deep inside the foliage, a bench more than big enough for two. The light is soft and flattering. Hermione has sticks in her hair and a smear of dirt on her chest.  
  
She's holding a glass jar. She looks exhilarated about it.  
  
"Let's see what you have to say about Cedric from in there," Hermione says, darkly.  
  
Tom steps forward, into the light. Hermione starts, and clutches the jar to her chest.  
  
"Go away."  
  
Tom rolls his eyes. "Sure, that's the way to convince me you aren't up to something." He keeps coming. She stares at him mistrustfully. She should, after what she called him. She shouldn't, after lying next to him in the gold of summer, after fitting their hands together like puzzle pieces, after he said please to her.  
  
He draws up in front of the bench and stands over her. There's something small moving around in the jar. Hermione's hair is stronger than any number of potions. She's scuffed her shoes. He crouches in front of her, careful not to scuff his. Their faces are very close.  
  
"I'll find out eventually," he coaxes. "You know I make a better ally than--"  
  
"Do I know that?" Hermione demands. "I thought I knew what you were like as a friend. Was I only ever your ally? Some swot you wanted on your side?"  
  
Tom looks into the jar. It's better than her face, angry and wonderful. It's a beetle. A beetle with strange markings. A smile drags itself across his face, all against his will.  
  
"That's a person, isn't it," he says. "God, you're brilliant. I wanted to kill Krum tonight."  
  
"Must be Tuesday," she says, a little shrill. "Oh, no, Viktor--I have to get back--" She stands up, almost kneeing Tom in the face, starts shoving the beetle jar in her purse. Tom stands too.  
  
He doesn't move backwards. When Hermione looks up from her purse, she flinches at his hand hovering in the air, but he just pulls the stick out of her hair. Then, a tiny leaf, though he leaves the handful of white petals that have found their way in. Hermione stands still, looking paralyzed, when he pulls out the hair stick, too, and plucks out gold pin after gold pin.  
  
"Give those back," she says, voice thick, but Tom doesn't. He tucks them in the pocket of his robe.  
  
"What are you going to do with her?"  
  
Her chin comes up. "I'm going to stop her spreading lies."  
  
"Of course you are," Tom murmurs. "God, Hermione. I can't be your friend."  
  
She jerks, like the words are acid. "You made that clear. Let me by."  
  
"I can't be your friend," Tom says. He hates that sound in his voice. It sounds like--his voice shouldn't sound like that. That desperate tone is one people should take with him. "I can't be Ron, or Harry, or fucking Susan to you."  
  
"Right now, you aren't anything to me."  
  
His wand is in his hand. She doesn't flinch when he puts it on her chest. He spells away the smear of dirt. "I can't let you go, either," he says regretfully. "Hermione, I don't want to be friends."  
  
She glares at him. Any other person, he'd know how to say this, how to spin this, how to pin blame and make himself look golden. Any other person, and he wouldn't want to say this. He doesn't want any other person, than this girl with a reporter in a jar. He doesn't think this is how his father feels about his mother but it for damned sure isn't the way he feels about Harry, and if it's the way Hermione feels about Susan or Ron then he has some holes to dig.  
  
"Are you," she says, very slowly, "Asking me out?"  
  
Only because I can't brand you like cattle, crawl inside your skin, tie your pulse to mine. "I guess I am," Tom says.  
  
"You're insane." Her eyes look tear-shiny.  
  
"Probably."  
  
"I'm not done arguing with you."  
  
"You probably won't ever be."  
  
"Damn it, Tom--" She shoves his wand aside and crashes into his chest. He wraps his arms around her. He bows his head into the wild hair tickling his nose, and breathes deep.  
  
Viktor, unseen, slips back into the Great Hall.  
  
*  
  
"Oh, Tom and Hermione have made up," James says. Harry's latest letter is hovering in front of him while he washes dishes. "I knew they would."  
  
Lily doesn't respond. James starts to turn, but she's behind him, slipping her arms around his waist, resting her forehead on his back.  
  
"Lils?"  
  
"Do you think they should have?" she says, into his back.  
  
"Why not?"  
  
Her hands pluck at his shirt. "I don't know. Don't they seem. Obsessive, to you? Is it healthy?"  
  
James, born wizard, born wizarding British and fully used to the idea of meeting your future spouse age eleven, and the sort of man who never fell out of love with anyone in his life, shrugs. "They're teenagers. Everything is an emergency to them."  
  
"Hmm." She doesn't sound convinced.  
  
"What's their other option, anyway?"  
  
"Dating someone outside the same two dozen people?"  
  
"Sounds muggle. Ow! You're a bad influence."  
  
"Oh, hush, they're at school." Lily stops pinching, smooths out his shirt. "I don't know. I'm probably just being overprotective. They're probably no weirder about each other than any other teenagers. How's Harry?"  
  
James squints at the letter. "Well, while we're being gossipy old biddies, do you think he has a crush on this Cedric kid?"  
  
"Ooh, let me see."  
  
Much later, after dishes, after dinner, after chasing each other around the living room, James brings it up again.  
  
"I think she's good for him," he says.  Her head is resting on his chest. He's leaning against the arm of the couch.  
  
"Who--? Oh, Hermione and Tom. You think so?"  
  
"It's been years since I caught him rehearsing his victory speeches. Better he's chasing girls than world domination."  
  
Lily laughs into his chest. "Now who's dramatic?"  
  
*  
  
Call the game: victory goes to Hermione Jean Potter Granger.


End file.
